TRINITY, Fla. – Aaron Derksen grows all types of berries. He’s owned the Starkey Blueberry Farm for seven years, so he knows how to prepare for a Florida freeze.
“Our concern tonight is the high winds,” said Derksen. “High winds break up the water molecules as they are in the air and disperse them and that could be problematic for us. So, hopefully winds will die down a little bit, so we get proper freeze protection.”
This doesn’t happen often in Florida, but when the temperature drops below 30 degrees, produce farmers like Dersksen work around the clock to make sure their crops survive the cold weather.
“We’ll monitor this at sunset particularly, and then all the way through the night, and then at 32 degrees. 33 degrees we’re turning the pumps on,” he said.
“We’re not sleeping tonight, it’s going to be an all-nighter,” Dersksen said.
Inside a shed on his property are where those pumps live.
“These are the things that work their magic. They pull the water in an amount of 65,000 gallons a minute in order to freeze protect our crops and without these things, we don’t have a crop, so these are really really critical for our operation.”
Through the night, the water will freeze his berries forming an ice shell over them.
He said, “As the water goes on, the ice builds up, gets thicker thicker and thicker. The plant has inherent heat in it and that holds the temperature consistently on the inside the ice igloo, therefore protecting the plant and protecting most importantly the blossoms and the buds from being damaged.”
The process may sound a little backward but he said that’s how he protects his livelihood. As soon as the temperature rises again and the ice melts, Dersksen can get back to picking berries again.
